Marketing Monday: 5 Tips for Converting with Your DIY Email Campaigns

In the age of social, email marketing is still considered one of the most effective methods to reach your customers. According to a Software Advice survey, "40% of B2B marketers rated the leads generated by email marketing (house list) as high quality."

So, if your DIY email marketing campaigns aren't producing the kind of leads or conversions that you expected, there are a few actions you can take to improve your results. From tracking the right metrics to sending targeted emails, you can increase your clicks as well as your conversions.

Related: Not ready to do it alone? Let one of our hand-picked email vendors help you out

Track Your Metrics

You can't determine how successful your DIY email marketing campaign is unless you're tracking the right metrics. These metrics will not only indicate the success of each campaign, but they can show you where your campaigns might be falling flat and where you can improve each conversion opportunity.

The click-through rate (CTR) tracks the proportion of people who opened your email and clicked a link inside it. The conversion rate tracks the proportion of people who clicked a link in your email and made a conversion.

If these rates match, then you need to focus on making your email content more compelling. If you have a high CTR but a low conversion rate, then you may need to work on improving your landing page instead.

Use A/B testing to find out what kinds of messages, subject lines, and content are most compelling for your audience. For example, test two different subject lines with the same email content and see which one has a higher open rate and CTR.

By testing and re-testing your email campaign content, you can narrow down what types of messages are most relevant to your audience. As you weed out irrelevant content, your conversion rates will increase.

Avoid Batch-and-Blast

Sending out one daily or weekly email to your entire list may seem like an easy and efficient way to run an email campaign. However, batch-and-blast emails tend to have a lower open rate and CTR than more differentiated messages.

The reason is simple -- people like personalized messages more than general ones. Segment and customize your email blasts according to demographics, conversion history, or other metrics in order to increase your conversions.

Solicit quick conversions by sending a promotional code to customers on your mailing list who have not made a conversion for a certain length of time.

If you have integrated your web analytics with your email platform, you can send retargeting emails to incentivize purchases from abandoned shopping carts.

Optimize Your Pre-Image Display

The majority of email services -- including Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and Hotmail -- now disable all emailed images by default. Customers need to click a button to allow images to load. By improving how your message looks before the images load, you can encourage customers to load the images and improve your CTR.

In order to make a conversion, your customer has to click from your email content to your website.

Make sure there is visual and textual consistency between your email and your landing page.

Use your metrics to determine how your customers view their email messages -- what email programs and what devices -- and optimize your landing page content according to that information. If most of your customers access their email through a mobile device, then your landing page should be optimized for mobile.

Related: Talk with one of our professional web designers to ensure your landing pages are up to par

By following these tips, you can increase how relevant and compelling your marketing emails are to your target audience. Testing and personalizing your content, improving your pre-image display, and improving the quality of your landing page can help you increase your email conversions. Be sure to follow your campaign's metrics to assess its success.